


The Air Is Toxic

by turtleduckanarchy



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F, it's really slight, just slight tyzula, kyoshi warrior ty lee, nothing too grand, some azula in prison stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 13:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6197146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turtleduckanarchy/pseuds/turtleduckanarchy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ty Lee is drawn to Azula, as any person would know.  It was only fate that she would visit the imprisoned princess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Air Is Toxic

The first time Ty Lee visited Azula, she was scared. Scared of what Azula would do upon seeing her. Scared of what would happen if she brought a game for them to play. Pai Sho would work, wouldn’t it? Azula was amazing at Pai Sho. Ty Lee decided at the last moment that bringing a game would be a bad thing to do. She had walked slowly to Azula’s cell, and it had taken a minute or five to convince the guards that she would be safe inside. She didn’t have a guarantee. She would be surprised if Azula didn’t try to kill her.

  
Upon sitting down, she was offered tea from the guards. She declined as politely as she could. She sat there and sat there, waiting. Azula didn’t move. The princess didn’t even look up to face her. Eventually, Ty Lee talked for a little. About herself mostly. How she was glad to have a change of scenery. How she was trying to make new friends and spread peace. All about things that she knew Azula would have hated more than anything. But she talked about it anyways.

  
“How are you doing?” she asked without thinking about the consequences of such a question.

  
There wasn’t an answer, and the cell stayed dead silent. After hours of sitting there, hearing her own heartbeat, Ty Lee got up to leave. Clearly Azula didn’t want to talk, and who could blame her?

  
“I hate it here,” the princess said softly when Ty Lee was at the door. “They took everything from me.”

  
Ty Lee sighed and nodded. Then she promised to back another day. The door shut automatically after she stepped outside. The guards were just as alert as they had been earlier, asking if she was okay.

 

The second time that Ty Lee visited Azula was worse, in her own opinion. Azula was staring her down, as if expecting an explanation. Or perhaps expecting an apology. Instead, the princess simply stated how long it had been since Ty Lee’s last visit.

  
Forty-two days. Ty Lee hadn’t known that it had been that long. Sure, she had known that it had been a long time, but she hadn’t kept track of the days. Hadn’t counted the hours or minutes. With the poor lighting, Ty Lee couldn’t make out exactly what decorated the walls of Azula’s cell, but there was something there.

  
“Do you want to play a game?” she asked the princess after a very long lapse of silence. Azula nodded, to Ty Lee’s surprise. “I brought Pai Sho.”

  
Azula nodded again, making Ty Lee wonder if she was doing the right thing. Right or wrong, she set up the board and arranged the pieces. Azula went first, then Ty Lee. It was a quiet game, and it took an awful long time to finish. Not so surprisingly, Azula won. Though Ty Lee didn’t have the will to admit that it was because she had allowed the princess to win. It was doubtful that Azula hadn’t realized that fact. After all, Azula was an absolute genius. She had conquered Ba Sing Se from the inside. She had conquered the Earth Kingdom. She was no fool, and she had to know that Ty Lee had simply lost on purpose.

  
“Ask them to give me something to eat. It seems like they’re trying to starve me out.” That was at least slightly similar to the old Azula. The Azula that wouldn’t be imprisoned. The Azula that held her head highly with unwavering pride. She was demanded something. That was close enough. It was something that was Azula.

  
“I will.”

"Good.” Azula’s eyes were no longer the striking gold that Ty Lee remembered them to be. Instead, they were dull. Fire didn’t really dance in them anymore, not in the way that Ty Lee remembered.

“I’ll be going now.”

“Very well.”

“Bye Azula.”

“Be back before forty-two days is up.”

Ty Lee asked the guards about the amount of food Azula was getting, and they answered that it was three meals a day. Nothing more than that, despite her attempts to get more information out of them. She did wonder aloud what a meal in prison counted as. A slice of bread and a small bowl of rice, maybe.

She shot them a glare and left without a word.

 

The third visit was much more unpleasant than the first two. The reason was extremely simple. Azula wasn’t happy with where she was. It seemed that she was finally coming to the realization that she was trapped in a cell where she was expected to stay for the rest of her life. Not only that, she was quite mad at Ty Lee for visiting after twenty-three days, as if she thought that Ty Lee was going to be able to make room every day just to walk to the prison and sit four hours while Azula sat and stared at her.

  
The only words that were spoken were from Azula, screaming about how much she hated her mother, Zuko, and Mai. Cursing the spirits for allowing her to fall so far from the grace she rightly had. She was a prodigy.

Ty Lee felt her heart breaking. After all, Azula had only just turned fifteen. There was just screaming, attempts to break the walls with bare hands, and basically ignoring Ty Lee’s presence. It was horrifying. Yes, she knew Azula was heavily guarded for a reason, but she hadn’t exactly experienced why. This was why. The girl’s intense hatred for everyone in her family (save her father) that, when combined with her paranoia, would have led to Azula’s own version of insanity.  
No matter what brought on the breakdown, Ty Lee hated it.

 

The fourth visit was eerily calm. It had been eight days since Ty Lee last visited, and she initially hadn’t thought that Azula would have recovered so quickly. But she did. She was sitting calmly in her cell with a cup of tea in her shackled hands. The Crown Princess of the Fire Nation had never looked so much like herself while imprisoned. She sat like she was awaiting a debriefing from her father on the next stage of overtaking the Earth Kingdom. She addressed Ty Lee like there was nothing off about the setting that they were in.

Her eyes were still dull. They were still unlit and dead-looking. They weren’t bloodshot, just empty. This place was killing her. It was killing her like a prison would for any other person.

“I don’t exactly understand,” Azula stated coldly as she sipped her tea.

“What isn’t there to understand?”

“That dreadful green dress of yours. Don’t tell me that you’ve gone and joined those pathetic Kyoshi Warriors.”

“But I did. I told you that on my first visit.” Azula frowned at this. Almost as she couldn’t recall that conversation.

“I don’t remember that being said. I do distinctly recall you saying something about trying to restore world peace, which never existed in the first place.”

“Oh, well I did join the Kyoshi Warriors. It’s…um…fun!”

“Don’t lie, Ty Lee. Admit it, you hate it there. What fun could arise there for a girl that only ever wanted to run away from a matched set? You have the same make-up and clothing as everyone else. It’s ridiculous.”

“I like it, though.”

“Do you really?”

“I…well—”

“Don’t answer if you’re not sure. That just means that you don’t have the brains to admit that you’d rather sit in this cell with me every day.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“Then go. Go run off to your silly little Avatar fangirls. Leave me in peace.”

Once outside of the prison, Ty Lee asked herself if leaving Azula there was really leaving her in peace.

 

The fifth visit was as silent as the first, until Ty Lee said it was time for her to leave.

“They’re going to kill me soon,” Azula stated flatly.

“You don’t know that. They won’t kill you. Zuko won’t—”

“ZuZu is sick putting up with the fact that his little sister is in prison. He’s going to have them kill me. I know they will.”

“That’s not true. I won’t let them.”

“I’d like to see you try.” Azula was still dead in the eyes, and it was starting to make Ty Lee wonder if Azula remembered any of these visits. “Don’t trust the air. It’s going to be stinking of years of death, only adding to mine.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Then go. No one insisted that you start coming so often.”

 

The sixth visit didn’t last long. The guards didn’t allow Ty Lee to enter the cell, prompting her to knock them out. Why would she allow them to keep her from the princess when the entire night she had nightmare of killing Azula? Upon opening the door, Ty Lee found that there was no one there.

 

The first visit Azula paid to Ty Lee was in the middle of the night. Ty Lee was only half-awake as she stared into the princess’ burning gold eyes. In the morning, she could not remember the words that Azula said (which was advice to leave the Kyoshi Warriors). Though the thought of resigning had suddenly started to flit around her mind.

The thing that stuck in Ty Lee’s in the morning, long after Azula had disappeared, was the chaste kiss that had been pressed to her lips and the fire in her eyes. It certainly felt as though she could not trust the air. Almost as if she did, the memory would fade away and die.

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly just wrote this up during my trigonometry class because I was bored, so I apologize if it's not exactly up to par with everything else in the world.


End file.
